Cactus - Opinions/Discussions

MyMixtapeOnFire

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#1
EDIT : FROM THE TIME THIS POST WAS MADE, THE PRICE HAS BEEN CHANGED FROM $100 to $125.

Hello.
If you have logged onto the Olympus server in the last 6-ish hours of me making this post, you will probably have heard that the cactus sell price has been nerfed down to $100 from the original $250. There are many people who are pleased with this, and many who are the exact opposite. In this post I will be doing my best to provide reasoning for both sides of the argument, my proposed solution, and the pros and cons of the entire ordeal.

Nerfed Cactus ( Current State )
My speculation for the initial nerf that cactus has received is simple - It was way too much money for literally sitting there.
The main argument most pro-nerf people will give you is that the server is, in its purest form, prison. It should be way more MINING-oriented, rather than farm and/or grinder-oriented. I think this is a pretty fair argument, and kind of hard to disagree with outside of a personal bias. From a purely reason-based perspective, there are no ways I can think of to really... counter this.


Adding to that, the insane amount of money a large-scale cactus farm could earn made mining completely obsolete before-hand in my opinion. I managed to do my first rebirth of season 2, which ran me $75,000,000 (Hades Rebirth), without mining after I got to farmer rank. Not a single time. Depending on the individual, this can really take away the fun and, well, point of the gamemode.

The main points of this side of the argument seem the most reasonable between the two. While you can disagree on an opinionated level, outside of the "its not just prison" or "why do we have plots then" points, I can't see how someone can find these points just "wrong" in any way, shape, or form.

Original Cactus ( Previous State )
Before I get to the points for this side of the argument, let's take some time to discuss original cactus.
Before the nerf, cactus sold for a whopping $864,000 per double chest. Now, it sells for a measly $345,600.
A $518,400 difference.
As you can imagine, that money difference is extremely relevant when you're talking about multiple double chests, literal dozens.

Now let's get to the main points as to why people think cactus should be reverted.

Cactus farms are not cheap; Time, resources, and effort do get put into making these massive farms. It's not like they're just worldedited in or magically appear. As someone without fly, I spent 30 minutes+ for every single layer on my cactus farm if I was focusing on only that. Probably closer to an hour per layer if I was watching a movie or talking to someone.
This kind of ties into the next point, which is, the price was not nerfed before the season started as it was with grinders. The server rebooted for its scheduled reboot, we log on, and cactus is now $150 cheaper in sell-price. Some people have spent the majority of the new map making these huge farms and have devoted a lot of energy and resources, not to mention playtime, into cactus farms, only for them to get spit on out of nowhere without warning, notice, or any form of notification that this price would be altered.

The argument above seems to be the main argument for cactus farms. Most people are genuinely just upset they were not informed on the matter and their hard work was basically for nothing. There are a few minor points I can make, such as, the option was available, had no real *reason* (subjective) to be nerfed, and that without spending EXTREME amounts of time building layers and entire plots full of cactus, the money you get from it relative to the new sheriff in town - magma cream - is actually laughable.

As you can see, the main point for the Original Cactus side is their time and effort going to waste is extremely frustrating, and there isn't much counter to the other side.
However, the
Nerfed Cactus side seems to be much more well-rounded and seems to reflect most of their ideals off of what they didn't like about the previous cactus.

Now I will talk about my opinions on the matter and give suggestions as to how this could possibly be handled in similar situations in the future, or how we can resolve this one without angering an entire group of people.

In my opinion, I do personally think cactus needed some form of nerf. Maybe this one was a bit too much, but it's all about trial and error realistically. I seem to find myself somewhere in the middle: I do enjoy that cactus got a nerf, however I also think the players that spent the time and resources into these large cactus farms have really gotten shafted for no real reason.
My main issue doesn't like in the nerf itself, rather than the way it has been handled. There was no mention, no warning, no notice. Unlike pig grinders, they were already announced they would be nerfed ahead of Season 2, and were nerfed when it launched. Cactus was seemingly untouched afaik and now, after a scheduled reboot, is now altered without warning.
I feel as if this creates a lack of motivation and kind of highlights a slight lack of communication among us with the launch of Season 2.
Why are we basically being punished for picking the wrong farm to make, when we were never told about this?
Why were we not given a notice, was it not thought to be important?

I will end this thread with a few recommendations/suggestions/ideas on how we can improve the cactus situation, and future situations similar:

For starters, I think I speak for everyone when I say a nerf like this, significant or not, should be broadcasted and well-known.

I feel for this specific situation, meeting in the middle is probably best. I don't think a cut of OVER 50% was really mandatory/necessary whatsoever, even if I do agree with the nerfing of the sell-price.

Another suggestion I have is making cactus, or some other crop, a form of "cash-crop" or something along those lines, meaning it does not have a stable price. Somewhat like turnips in Animal Crossing, however a little less "stock market-y" and a little more random with a large "risk-reward" factor. These fluctuating prices would make it mandatory for someone to go all or nothing to make a consistent and reliable source of income.

Let the community decide, or at least have a say-so in these sorts of things. If large afk-cactus farms are not what you envisioned for Olympus that's fine, however if it is currently a thing on the server, create a thread, strawpoll, whatever it may be, and let the community decide. It truly feels like a slap in the face to log on and have my farm feel useless without hearing a thing about it.

Which side are you on? What do you think? Do you have any other suggestions? Discuss below.

This may be somewhat of an irrelevant or unimportant topic to some, however I am using this as a way to get more people interested/involved in what goes on in the Olympus server and show how important it is to be involved in the community.
 
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Bearified.

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aqieh
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#2
I dont mind the change because im not one to make farms. I think personally though that when you go onto Olympus you should have 2 options of a pure mining server and then a farms enabled server, because for the people that play Olympus to mine and put in many hours of mining. Getting passed by people with cactus farms of 5-6k cactus, can be a little annoying.
 

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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#3
While I somewhat disagree with the nerf to farms in Season 2, the focus has clearly been shifted to a more mining-heavy play style. Hence pork reduced in price by 67%, cacti by 60% etc.

Now, with one iron golem spawner (current price around 70k mana) you can make around 200k an hour or so (from my grinder). In Season 1 a full pig grinder was around 3.5k spawners (7 million mana). This would make about 83.3 million an hour.

So, spending one mana on old piggies would get you around $11.9 per hour.
Spending one mana on new golems gets you around $2.86 per hour

This means old piggies are 4x more profitable than new golems at current prices.

I believe golem spawner prices will go down, but not by 4x. I plan to do tests with all spawners . It's possible there are some that are much more efficient than iron golems. Until then, keep mining folks!
 

_C4OnYourDoor_

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#4
Cactus should definitely be $250 but i enjoyed it more when it was $300 because you have to grind to build those farms, its not an easy road doing those so making it less is an absolute joke tbh

Edit: Last map i made a 2 plot cactus farm and that took me atleast 12hours of grinding to get so i think people should be rewarded for that
 

LiLKayla

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#5
Hi! I see both sides completely!

I personally am bias due to my love of cactus farms! But I personally don't find the new price settling, I don't think it should have been nerfed that dramatically. Cactus farms are extremely labor intensive, expensive to build, and you honestly lose a lot of product due to one item getting stuck, then 5000 more stack before it gets cleared by farm litter.

I can understand the need for a nerf, I do agree with that. But from a cactus lover building a farm is as big of a grind as mining. It takes effort and patience. It also takes a decently large size to make profitable amounts and now with this drastic nerf to will be even more difficult. This can be even less rewarding to those players who do not have constant access to fly. Yes we have tempt fly now, but cactus farms take hours and hours to get to a profitable size.

Personally I think we should meet in the middle, instead of 850k or 345k...how abouttttt 550k??

This is how I personally feel about this situation, like mix stated I see both sides. I understand that this season is meant to be a grind! I'm all about that grind! But mining can be redundant, having a project to work on between ranks really refreshes my mind and allows me to play actively for longer periods of time.

Maybe Ill suggest making the more difficult/Redstone heavy auto farms more profitable than cactus since all it takes its water, hoppers, cactus, sand, and fences. I think experimenting with farms such as melon, sugarcane, pumpkin, potatoes, carrot, etc... could be an interesting strategy for making cash.
 

_C4OnYourDoor_

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#6
Hi! I see both sides completely!

I personally am bias due to my love of cactus farms! But I personally don't find the new price settling, I don't think it should have been nerfed that dramatically. Cactus farms are extremely labor intensive, expensive to build, and you honestly lose a lot of product due to one item getting stuck, then 5000 more stack before it gets cleared by farm litter.

I can understand the need for a nerf, I do agree with that. But from a cactus lover building a farm is as big of a grind as mining. It takes effort and patience. It also takes a decently large size to make profitable amounts and now with this drastic nerf to will be even more difficult. This can be even less rewarding to those players who do not have constant access to fly. Yes we have tempt fly now, but cactus farms take hours and hours to get to a profitable size.

Personally I think we should meet in the middle, instead of 850k or 345k...how abouttttt 550k??

This is how I personally feel about this situation, like mix stated I see both sides. I understand that this season is meant to be a grind! I'm all about that grind! But mining can be redundant, having a project to work on between ranks really refreshes my mind and allows me to play actively for longer periods of time.

Maybe Ill suggest making the more difficult/Redstone heavy auto farms more profitable than cactus since all it takes its water, hoppers, cactus, sand, and fences. I think experimenting with farms such as melon, sugarcane, pumpkin, potatoes, carrot, etc... could be an interesting strategy for making cash.
As much as i would like cactus to go to the way it was before i highly doubt Dacon will put it to that. With it being a high labour and high grinding experience to get a decent cactus farm going i think the price should be way higher than $100. Yes its just been changed to $125 but thats still way too low. If you're wanting to nerf the farms maybe nerf the spawning rates a tiny bit instead of changing the prices. I just want to also know why you changed them to $300 and then a day later change it all the way back down to $100. Like you're doing the opposite to what you previously did so something drastic had to change your mind